Search form

TRENDING:

FEATURED:

Pentagon Notebook: House proposes $7 billion less for Defense Dept. in 2012

A House-passed stopgap spending measure would trim annual Pentagon funding by more than $7 billion from the current level and prohibit the Defense Department from starting new weapon programs.

The lower chamber’s 2012 continuing resolution calls for a 1.4 percent reduction to the Pentagon’s budget from the $533 billion it got in 2011, which would put the military’s base funding at around $526 billion. The Senate on Friday tabled the measure over issues not tied to Pentagon spending.

ADVERTISEMENT

The House measure also would give the Obama administration the amount of war funding it requested for 2012: almost $118 billion. That is down from the $157 billion allocated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2011.

Officials have said they requested less in war funding because of the planned removal of most American troops from Iraq this year, and the removal of 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Defense consultant Jim McAleese said firms that provide a range of services in Iraq and Afghanistan will feel an “immediate impact” of that reduction.

The stopgap’s Pentagon funding level of $527 billion is around $3 billion less than what was proposed in the DoD appropriations bill the chamber approved in July. But it is $14 billion more than the measure approved last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The DoD budget is set to continue shrinking under a deal hammered out by the White House and congressional leaders in August as part of the debt-reduction measure. That agreement called for $350 billion in cuts through 2023.

A senior congressional aide told The Hill this week that the defense committees have struggled setting a top line Pentagon funding amount for 2012. That’s because their requests that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) detail how much should be cut in 2012 have gone unanswered.

Mullen told the panel that U.S. officials believe Iran has been supplying Tehran-backed Shiite militias in southern Iraq with increasingly lethal weapons that have been used in attacks on Sunni and American targets.

When Washington sent word to Iranian officials that the arms shipments and other meddling in Iraqi affairs must end, Iranian officials initiated a “hiatus” period, Mullen said.

But U.S. commanders in Iraq have told Pentagon officials they are confident “Iran is not going away.” That’s why American forces have launched attacks on those Iran-back groups in southern Iraq, Mullen said.

The chairman, who next week will retire, issued a blunt warning to Tehran: “If they keep killing our troops, we won’t just sit back and watch.”

Unaffordable force

It turns out the Defense Department’s budget-cutting will not stop at its own budget.

Mullen acknowledged to the Senate panel that Pentagon officials are aware they have built an Afghanistan military that Kabul cannot even come close to affording.